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Forescout CounterACT Increases Visibility, Control and Compliance at Broward College

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CounterACT interoperability via ControlFabric technology enabled Broward College to realize rapid deployment, greater operational intelligence and mitigation of BYOD security and compliance risks

CAMPBELL, Calif., June 3, 2014 —Forescout Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of pervasive network security solutions for Global 2000 enterprises and government organizations, today announced that Broward College selected the Forescout CounterACT® platform to secure and manage the personally- and college-owned devices connecting to its network. Broward turned to CounterACT to enhance their network security posture while preserving the end user experience. As a result, Broward increased network visibility and control, saved time on enforcing BYOD security policy, quickly integrated the solution campus-wide and improved compliance with privacy and copyright regulations.

As one of the largest colleges in the U.S., with more than 68,000 students located at four campuses and seven satellite locations in South Florida, Broward supports a broad array of devices simultaneously connected to its core network at any given time. Broward’s IT team aimed to invest in technologies that would facilitate a flexible, secure bring your own device (BYOD) strategy for its faculty, staff and students to facilitate learning. More so, they sought a solution that would easily integrate with their infrastructure and could demonstrate capacity to support future device, volume and policy requirements.

After an extensive review process, Broward chose Forescout CounterACT for its comprehensive feature set, the means to operate without agents and its ability to deliver:

  • Real-time visibility of devices on the network with the ability to identify trends
  • Full network access control, including rich wired and wireless BYOD support
  • Flexible policy configuration and enforcement options
  • Automated network security processes, i.e. VLAN translations for device type
  • Compliance support for different privacy mandates, such as those in PCI, FERPA and HIPAA
  • Broad integrations with other security solutions, such as SIEM and anti-virus

Matt Santill, chief information security officer (CISO) at Broward College, stated: “We immediately see the device type, user connected, ports opened, processes running, vulnerabilities and security issues on every device on the network – without having to run an independent scan or report. We not only have significantly more visibility, but we can take faster, more informed action. With CounterACT, the reduction of risk and added time-saving is invaluable.”

In addition, Broward was able to use CounterACT to easily create custom policies depending on user, device and risk. For example, they provide students and faculty with a solid BYOD experience that automatically limits network resource access for personal devices that don’t adhere to the college’s security policies and notifies users to promote acceptable behavior.

“BYOD is the operating norm in the education industry. Broward College is one of many institutions utilizing the CounterACT platform to continuously monitor and mitigate security risks across a wide variety of BYOD use cases,” said Brant Kennedy, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Forescout. “CounterACT is not only best-in-class, but it offers the most cost-effective approach for ed tech to bolster network and endpoint security while ensuring the best possible experience for employees and students.”

Broward benefits from Forescout’s ControlFabric technology, which allows CounterACT to seamlessly integrate with other network and security infrastructure. For example, Broward sets one policy to enforce malware security policy across multiple anti-virus products. The college integrates the Forescout solution with its SIEM system, for access logs and incident response. The interoperability allows the team to take SIEM-based actions invoked through CounterACT based on the type of user, device or issue.

“We can take action on any suspicious behavior we’re seeing from CounterACT itself or in our SIEM, using CounterACT to do network isolation or simply send message popups,” said Santill. “We do that quite regularly, especially for inappropriate content and other types of policy violations. We’ll send those users a little notification on their desktop saying they’re breaking college policy.”

CounterACT also fortifies Broward College’s support of privacy regulations such as Payment Card Industry (PCI), Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). For example, CounterACT also helps Broward comply with the Digital Rights Millennium Copyright Act, by notifying the IT and information security teams when a user appears to commit copyright infringement or runs peer-to-peer software on their machines. CounterACT allows the team to directly terminate the infringing software on the endpoint.

“We feel that CounterACT is one of the best security tools currently on the market,” said Santill. “It not only has immediate operational value, but the visibility allows us to plan strategically for the future.”

Relevant Links
Broward Case Study
Forescout CounterACT
Forescout ControlFabric
Forescout Blog
Forescout Facebook
Forescout Twitter

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About Forescout Technologies, Inc.
Forescout delivers pervasive network security by allowing organizations to continuously monitor and mitigate security exposures and cyberattacks. The company’s CounterACT platform dynamically identifies and assesses network users, endpoints and applications to provide visibility, intelligence and policy-based mitigation of security issues. Forescout’s open ControlFabric technology allows a broad range of IT security products and management systems to share information and automate remediation actions. Because Forescout’s solutions are easy to deploy, unobtrusive, flexible and scalable, they have been chosen by more than 1,500 enterprises and government agencies. Headquartered in Campbell, California, Forescout offers its solutions through its network of authorized partners worldwide. Learn more at www.forescout.com.